


Ladies in Red

by storm_queen



Category: Poison - Secret (Music Video)
Genre: Don't Have to Know Canon, F/F, F/M, Femslash, Film Noir, Gun Violence, Heist, Jieun/Hana, Minor Character Death, Past Hana/Sunhwa, Poisoning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-19
Updated: 2013-12-19
Packaged: 2018-01-05 03:18:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1088973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/storm_queen/pseuds/storm_queen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sunhwa wants to escape from her mobster boyfriend.<br/>Hana wants to escape from her dead-end job.<br/>Jieun just wants to have fun.<br/>And Hyosung's the one with the gun.</p><p>It goes down at a bar.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ladies in Red

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lillypillylies](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lillypillylies/gifts).



> Thank you so much for the opportunity to stretch myself with such a fun story! I hope your Yuletide is wonderful.
> 
> Just to reiterate, this is fic set in the world of the 'Poison' music video. I've taken the girls' names for their characters, but it is about the furthest thing imaginable from Secret RPS.
> 
> I should also include a general disclaimer that I know nothing about organized crime in Korea. ;)

The private detective’s office was spacious and well-lit, nothing like Hyosung had imagined it would be from decades-old Hollywood movies. The detective, however, was another matter, straight from the silver screen. He let his gaze linger over Hyosung, and he clearly liked what he saw.

“What can I do for you today, Miss…?” he asked, letting his voice trail off and leaving a space for her to fill in her name.

“Jun Hyosung,” she told him. “But you can call me Hyosung. I’m looking for a detective.”

“Well, you’ve come to the right place,” he said. “I’m Kim Songchul. Call me Songchul.”

Hyosung nodded, although she felt no friendship or familiarity with the man. But it was her job to make him think otherwise, and she smiled. 

“I certainly hope I’m in the right place,” she said. “You see, I’m looking for a detective who is well acquainted with the police force, and in particular with raids on certain bars or clubs. Maybe he even used to be on the force himself, and still has friends there.” She sank into the chair for clients and smiled at him, pure innocence wrapped up in floral perfume.

“That’s a tall order,” Kim said, his smile fading slightly.

“I’m looking for someone to work... closely with me on a project that could garner us both a great deal of money in the coming weeks,” Hyosung continued. She crossed her legs, bringing one knee up level with the desk.

“A project that would not involve the police, if I understand you,” the detective said. 

“No,” Hyosung said, inclining her head. “This project would also not involve the Gan family, but would probably take place in one of their establishments. “Poison” is the name of the bar.” Poison, upscale and frequented by most of the Gan family and their associates, was also situated directly above Gan Junho’s personal vault.

“And what makes you think I’m the man for the job?” Kim asked.

 _Because everyone knows you’re crooked, in too deep with the Gan family, and easily turned by a pretty face,_ Hyosung thought, but did not say. She smiled up at him.

“A mutual friend told me that there were three things you couldn’t refuse,” she said. “Money, whisky, and a good-looking woman. I’m offering you two out of the three.”

“Who exactly was this friend?” Kim asked, although Hyosung was pleased to note that he hadn’t said no.

“Han Sunhwa,” she said, watching the recognition pass across Kim’s face at the mention of Gan Junho’s girl.

“Well, in that case, you were told right,” Kim said. “And Han Sunhwa would know, as she’s… a very good-looking woman.”

“So is two out of three good enough to start our negotiations?” Hyosung asked. She put a lilt in her voice, tilted her head to the side. “Or should I run to the liquor store and come back?”

“No need for that,” Kim told her. “I’ve got everything we need right here.” He rose from his desk, walked to a minibar against the wall. She should have known.

“What’ll it be, doll?” he asked, and Hyosung raised her eyebrows.

“Surprise me,” she said, doubting he had a very wide selection.

He brought her whisky. 

\---

The last customers had finally filtered out, with a few who thought they were above the law shooting Hana smirks and promising they’d catch her later to pay their tabs. What good was a money laundering front if there wasn’t even any money coming in half the time?

It was nearly three in the morning. Hana would be opening the bar again at noon.

“Hey,” Jieun said, propping her elbows up on the bar and giving Hana that adorable smile. “We ready for tomorrow?”

“We had better be,” Hana said. She turned her back to grab a dishtowel, aware that the ticking clock had made her short-tempered. There was no turning back at this point, even if she had wanted to call up Hyosung and Sunhwa and tell them she had changed her mind. They would have to see this through, one way or another.

“What, aren’t you just a little bit excited?” Jieun teased. She made a move for the towel to wipe down the bar herself, but Hana snatched it away.

“Tomorrow - later today - we’re planning to steal millions’ worth of already-stolen jewelry, possibly kill someone, frame someone else for it and drive off into the sunset,” she said. “Let’s not forget the part where the mob is going to be out for our blood, not least because I’ve been managing the bar for three years and Sunhwa has been sleeping with Gan Junho. So excited isn’t the first word that comes to mind, no.”

Jieun’s face had fallen. “Are you frightened?” she asked. “I promise everything will go okay. They’ll never - ”

“I’m not frightened.” Hana slammed the last dirty glasses into a tray. “We just need to make sure everything goes off according to plan. What if someone sees me getting the code to you?”

“We talked about this,” Jieun said. “Play it like a drink, on the house. Write it on a napkin.”

“That sounds so obvious,” Hana said. “And what if someone complains about you drinking while you’re singing?”

“Give me a kiss when you give it to me and no one is going to complain,” Jieun said, the mischievous smile creeping back onto her face. “Put on a show.”

“Oh, and that will make it so easy for you to get downstairs to the vault, with everyone’s attention on you?” Hana was aware that she was running through all the worst case scenarios, that she sounded irrational. She didn’t care. Everything had to be perfect. One wrong move could lead to all of them getting killed.

“No, you’re right,” Jieun said then. “We don’t want to attract that much attention. But no one is going to think twice about the drink. They know we’re close. They like to think about it.” The corners of her eyes crinkled as she smiled; at another point she might have stuck out her tongue.

Hana let out a heavy sigh. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have been short. I’m just… worried.”

“Worried about us, or worried about Sunhwa?” Jieun asked. The look on her face was far too knowing. Until now, the two of them had avoided talking too much about Sunhwa, by unspoken agreement, but Hana supposed it would all be coming out sooner or later, and it might as well be now.

“Can’t I be worried about both?” Hana asked, but it wasn’t a real answer. She sighed. “I trust Sunhwa. You know that. But she’s in a lot of danger if things go south. More than either of us.”

“Me especially,” Jieun said, supplying what Hana hadn’t said out loud. “It’ll be fine. Really. Sunhwa knows what she’s doing. We all do. She’ll get down to the vault just after I do. You’ll meet us there. Everything will be fine. We’ll get in, get out, get filthy rich.”

“And look over our shoulders for the rest of our lives.” It wasn’t so easy to pull one over on the mob, even with insider information from the boss’s girlfriend and a crooked ex-cop.

“And leave a trail of dead bodies and emigrate to Japan or Canada or something,” Jieun disagreed. “Stop worrying. Have a drink.”

Hana made a face. “I just put everything away and you want me to dirty the glasses again?”

“It’s your last time closing up, so you might as well,” Jieun said. “I’ll have one rum and coke, and a whisky neat for my pain in the ass girlfriend.”

“Last call was an hour ago,” Hana said, but Jieun probably had a point about the whisky, at least. “And I still have to get everything shut down properly and open by noon.”

“So I’ll help clean up.” Jieun straightened up and walked behind the bar. “I’m very helpful.”

She wrapped her arms around Hana from behind, which was actually not very helpful at all.

“Are we going to make out or are we going to drink?” Hana asked, but she could already feel her tightened muscles relaxing as Jieun rested her head on Hana’s left shoulder.

“Both, and then have crazy hot sex on the floor of the bar,” Jieun said.

“Ugh! I don’t think so!” Hana untangled herself from Jieun, then turned to face her.

“We’ll take the drinks with us, and we won’t even worry about bringing the bottles back,” she said. “Have you finished your bag for tomorrow?”

“Of course I have. Nothing traceable. Don’t worry so much,” Jieun said. “Come on. You’ll feel better once we’re out of here.”

“You’re not wrong about that,” Hana agreed. And for the night, Jieun was right. They would go home, for one last night in the apartment. Get drunk on a bottle of rum and a bottle of whisky and whatever mixers were left in the fridge for Jieun. Fall into an uneasy sleep.

Sleeping would be uneasy for a long time after, Hana knew, even if they managed to pull it off and escape. You didn’t get away from the Gan family that easily.

But Jieun could take her mind off it for a few minutes, with small, familiar hands and whispery giggles. Hana forced herself to breathe, to believe that wherever they went after this, they would go together.

“Sorry I was such a bitch earlier,” she said abruptly, when Jieun might very well have already drifted off to sleep.

“I’m not,” Jieun said. “I love you as a bitch.”

“Well, that’s a relief because it’s not changing anytime soon.” Hana stared into the darkness, wondering how long she had left before her alarm, mentally recounting everything she had in her bag for the next day. The false identification. The change of clothes. The small vial of liquid from Hyosung, just in case. Although Hana couldn’t imagine what would prompt her to use it.

“Just slip it into a drink,” Jieun said, and Hana realized she had spoken out loud. “Junho’s, or Curls’s.” Gan Junho’s bodyguard, no older than the mob’s heir apparent, who took just as much pride in his appearance.

“We can’t call attention to ourselves,” Hana said.

“Of course not,” Jieun agreed. “Get in, get out, get filthy rich.”

“‘Take the money and run,’” Hana said, in English, and they both laughed.

“I wouldn’t want to run away with anyone but you,” Hana said then, just so Jieun would know it if anything went sideways. “Not Sunhwa. Nobody.”

“I know. Now go to sleep,” Jieun said. “We’ve got to have our game faces on tomorrow.”

But sleep was still a long time coming.

\---

Sunhwa - beautiful, remote, trying harder to pull this off than any of them - accepted a glass of red wine. Jieun could tell she was nervous, maybe even more nervous than Hana, but she still shot Jieun a conspiratorial smile as she raised the glass to her lips.

Jieun returned the smile, twirled her hair around her fingers flirtateously. They were all in this together, after all. She kept up her performance, swaying back and forth on the platform, singing to everyone in the bar.

Part of singing meant she could see the whole room at any point, monitoring the action and keeping tabs on the other girls. Jieun was glad of that, not necessarily because she thought anything would go wrong, but because her part on the floor was so comparatively easy. She could almost forget she was part of the action and just think she was watching a movie. But not quite.

Hyosung came in through the door to Jieun’s right. Hyosung, who Sunhwa had brought in, who terrified Jieun just a little bit, who had masterminded everything and who was the one person standing between all of them and total failure.

Jieun figured Hyosung and Sunhwa were sleeping together, or they would be soon, and that made her a little more charitable to the other girl. Hyosung had kept on her coat, even indoors, and was flirting with the guy in front of her like she was really interested in whatever shit he was talking. She was good; Jieun had to give her that. It was because of Hyosung’s machinations that any of this would work. She played the guy in front of her like she had played the detective.

If she wanted to, Hyosung could play them all. Someone had to be keeping an eye on things to keep that from happening, and it might as well be Jieun. A thrill ran down her spine at the thought, even as she told herself that Hyosung would never actually double-cross them. That was probably what all her marks thought.

In Gan Junho’s booth, Sunhwa was practically in his lap, wrapping her arms around his neck while his bodyguards and flunkies looked on. Everything was falling into place.

And really, that was a stupid, stupid thing for Jieun to think. Because of course that’s when it all falls apart in the movies.

But that was silly, superstitious. Jieun watched as Hana nodded to Sunhwa, and began writing numbers down on a piece of paper. She’d gotten the code. Jieun wasn’t jealous, not of Sunhwa. Not even of the past Hana and Sunhwa had shared. And she trusted Hana, and Hana trusted Sunhwa. That should be enough.

Jieun turned her attention back to the room at large, trying to infuse her singing with just a little extra something to make sure she looked like that was where her mind was.

And then Hana was walking up to Jieun’s platform, smiling like everything was perfect and fine and okay, and holding - _flowers_. Flowers, wrapped in paper, for Jieun. Flowers for Jieun and the code to the vault.

“For me?” Jieun exclaimed, as Hana practically curtsied presenting them.

“For you,” Hana said, smiling with transparent affection. Her index finger tapped lightly against one sheaf of the paper as she handed over the flowers. Her nails were a bright, sparkling red. Every eye in the room was on them, and then Hana was turning away. Jieun couldn’t resist bringing the flowers up to smell them, even though they weren’t anything fragrant.

They were for her. She’d told Hana to just bring her a drink. It didn’t have to be anything at all. But she knew the flowers were Hana’s way of continuing to apologize for how on edge she had been, and promising they were still in this together.

Jieun was just slipping her fingers into the paper to bring out the code when she saw Hyosung, out of the corner of her eye, still standing by the door. Their eyes met, and Jieun held up the flowers to show off, just for a moment, but suddenly a man was sweeping past Hyosung, jostling her and catching her off balance. For one second, time froze.

A moment later, Hyosung was stooping to the ground to pick up a small, jeweled cigarette lighter. And at that moment, Jieun’s role might have been to stand there and look pretty, but she was pretty sure that wasn’t part of the plan.

Hyosung’s eyes widened as she glanced again to Jieun, and suddenly Jieun knew. They had been made. The man who had tipped his hat and dropped the cigarette lighter, moved into the far corner with his head down - he had made them. Made Hyosung, and she knew it.

Jieun had always been on the periphery of the plan, and she knew it. She was included because she was Hana’s girlfriend and because she could make useful distractions, and because she was ready to throw everything away on the hope of a much more sparkling future. She had never seen the man before, and had no way of knowing whether he was someone from Hyosung’s past, the detective she had been romancing, or, most worrying of all, a member of the Gan organization.

Jieun was ready to make a scene. Launch herself at the man, demanding he buy her a drink. It was something she was good at. But Hyosung recovered from her shock, shook her head, and held up one finger to Jieun, telling her to stop. Wait. Everything was under control.

Hyosung followed the man who had dropped the lighter across the room. His face was still obscured by his hat, a fedora that looked like it came straight out of some old American film. Jieun couldn’t take her eyes away as Hyosung took his arm, smiling up at him, and led him off to the toilets. Just another mark, and it looked like Hyosung was a match for him.

Jieun returned to scanning the room as she reached the chorus of her song, and then she saw it.

At some point in all the commotion, Sunhwa, Gan Junho, and his bodyguard had vanished.

That was definitely, definitely not part of the plan. Jieun could feel her heartbeat accelerate, pounding in her throat as she scanned the room. They were nowhere in sight.

Faltering over the last verse, Jieun glanced at Hana, who met her eyes. She had noticed, too.

“Go,” Hana mouthed to her, and Jieun held up a hand to signal that she was taking her break, even mid-song. It wasn’t like Junho could get suspicious if she stopped now.

\---

“Please, you’re hurting me,” Sunhwa appealed, looking up at the man she had been sleeping with for nearly three years now.

“Oh, we wouldn’t want that,” Junho answered with a sneer. “I would never want to hurt some viper planning to break into my vault with her little lesbian lovers. Tell me if you like this better.” He loosed his grip on her upper arm, instead resting his left hand companionably on her shoulder. At the same time, he brought a gun to her head in his right hand.

“I - no,” Sunhwa whispered. She looked up at Junho, aware that her mouth and hands were trembling, her voice cracking. “I’m not planning anything. I swear to you.”

“It’ll be easy enough to see about that,” said a voice, and Curls appeared behind them, his own gun drawn. “Jung Hana and Princess K-pop just disappeared on each other’s heels.”

“Well, don’t just stand there,” Junho said. “Come on. We’ll get to the bottom of this.”

He led Sunhwa to the stairs, keeping the muzzle of the gun pressed to her head, and his arm slung over her shoulders. Curls walked abreast of them, his own gun drawn.

They were taking her down to the vault. Where Jieun and Hana - shit, Hana - were apparently already waiting. Where she should have been by now.

It was all her fault, Sunhwa knew. All she had to do was keep up the charade for half an hour longer, excuse herself to the powder room after Jieun, but it was too late for that now. The metal of the gun had warmed against her skin, she could hardly breathe, and she knew her face was telling the other girls how sorry she was, how badly she had fucked up, as Junho led her into the corridor before the vault.

“Well, look here,” Curls said, pointing his gun in Jieun and Hana’s direction. Jieun looked stricken, holding onto a bouquet of flowers wrapped in paper. Hana, by contrast, just looked numbly shocked.

“I’m so sorry,” Sunhwa said, hardly daring to move with Junho’s gun against her temple.

“You should have thought about that before you sent your little friends down here,” Curls answered. “It’s too late for them now.”

“I wasn’t talking to you,” Sunhwa said, and in that moment she knew it didn’t matter if a bullet went through her head, because she was leaving Gan Junho one way or another, and now he knew just how much she despised him.

A shot reported loudly in the enclosed space and Sunhwa felt the pressure leave her suddenly - she stumbled, not even knowing whether she was alive as she heard another shot and Hyosung appeared before her.

“Hyosung,” she breathed, and she saw, her head still spinning, that Junho and Curls each lay sprawled on the floor, guns still in hand. A brilliant patch of red was soaking through half of Junho’s shirt. There was no way he had survived that.

“It’s okay,” Hyosung said, holding out the arm that wasn’t attached to her own gun, and Sunhwa took it, still dazed. Junho was dead. Curls was dead. She as good as pulled the trigger herself, only it was Hyosung who had done it. Who had shot Junho first, for her.

“Do you know the numbers to get into the vault? We have the passcode for the safe itself,” Hyosung said, shaking Sunhwa out of her own mind, and Sunhwa nodded.

“I can get it.” The barred doors swung open easily, and Sunhwa cast one last look over her shoulder as Hyosung steered her forward, with an eye to the rear in case anyone upstairs had heard the shots and come running.

The vault was lit up like a jewelry store display, and to them, right now, it almost was.

“What the hell happened back there?” Hana was asking, but Jieun shushed her, still holding on to the bouquet as she twisted the combination lock.

“Not now!”

The safe door swung open, and there they were. The jewels from the Russian ambassador. Worth a fortune on the black market, if anyone could ever part with them.

Sunhwa forgot about Junho in that moment. She forgot about his red tie soaked through by redder blood, forgot about the redness of her lips where she had bitten them to keep herself from screaming. Her world contracted, and suddenly all it was made of, was the jewels Jieun was passing back, the gun in Hyosung’s hand, the knowledge that Hana would have the getaway car exactly where it should be.

“We’re going to be rich,” she breathed.

“We’re going to be dead if we don’t get out now,” Hana scolded, but she was smiling too, the spell cast on her as surely as any of the rest of them. They were all smiling, laughing, hugging. Like they wouldn’t stop till they reached New York City. And there was a space for Sunhwa to join in. No one seemed to blame her. They were all alive, unharmed, high on adrenaline.

“Follow me,” Sunhwa said.

“Who was that man, anyway? Where were you?” Jieun asked Hyosung. “I was afraid you wouldn’t make it down in time!”

“He’s knocked out in the toilet,” Hyosung said dismissively. “I’ll pay him a visit tomorrow. We didn’t need another body for the police to start connecting the dots.”

Sunhwa was almost dizzy with relief as she led the others out into the afternoon sun. It was another world out here, with warm sunlight, fresh air, and the knowledge that no one had gone looking for Gan Junho yet.

Which meant no one was looking for them.

“I’ll drive,” Hyosung said, as they spotted the car. As if anyone would have dared to stop her.

“Shotgun!” Jieun yelled, and Sunhwa wasn’t going to disagree with that either, even if it meant she was riding in the back with Hana.

The windows were rolled down, the music was turned up, and they were off without a destination in sight. Someone would find the bodies in the corridor, someone would find the empty safe, the open vault, but they would be long gone. Sunhwa was sure of it.

“I’m sorry I got the two of you into this,” she said to Hana, just soft enough that she didn’t think Jieun could hear. “I know I had no right to ask for your help.”

“I wanted a fresh start as much as you did,” Hana said. She smiled briefly. “And now we’ve got it. So… thank you.”

“You too,” Sunhwa said. She ran her hands across the pearls from the stolen necklace. Pressed it to her lips, dangled it out the window. It was real.

A fresh start. And only Hyosung’s loose end to tie up. But Hyosung was more than capable of that, and everyone knew it.

They had already gotten away with murder.

\---

Another man would have stayed home the next day, nursing his headache and his wounded pride and wondering where things had gone wrong. But not Kim Songchul.

Hyosung let herself into his office, her lips curving into an automatic smile as he raised his head and stared at her.

“May I take off my coat?” she asked, not waiting for an answer. Underneath the coat, she was wearing a short, silky red dress, and thigh-high stockings with garters. Her look completed with silver heels, she felt tall, powerful, devastatingly sexy and utterly competent. Kim Songchul’s wet dream meeting his nightmares, the role she had set out to play. She took a seat.

“I believe I owe you a drink,” he said, pushing back from his desk and making his way to pour a glass of whisky. Just one, which was unusual for him. Songchul was a heavy drinker, in the tradition of all the best hardboiled detectives and crooked insiders. Hyosung tried to remain at ease as he crossed behind her line of sight.

He bent over to hand her the glass, then balancing against the edge of the desk, and she could see the darkening bruise on his temple as he leaned down.

The drink was typical for the detective, a pale amber that tasted too burnt for Hyosung to enjoy. She took a sip anyway, feeling the prickle on her tongue, seeing the mark her red lipstick made on the glass.

“And I suppose you think I owe you an apology,” she said coolly, setting the glass down. Even in this moment, she could tell he wanted her. She could have him wrapped around her fingers forever if she played her cards right. She brought her fingers up to her throat, smiled up at him through her eyelashes.

“Was I that stupid?” Songchul asked, landing his fist hard on the table, and Hyosung recoiled. Too much, too soon. His pride was wounded, as well it should be.

“I came to return your lighter,” she said, letting all the flirtatiousness fall from her voice. The thin jeweled case, so warm in her hands the night before. “You’ll want to hold on to it.”

He unfurled his fist to take it from her, flicking it open and shut with the familiar flicker. It seemed to make up his mind about something, and he moved back around to the far side of his desk.

“It didn’t occur to me to follow you until last night,” he said finally. “All those cosy little meetings with Han Sunhwa. You knew exactly when the jewels would arrive in that safe. And I was never part of your plan.” He let his fingers trail over his revolver, lying out on the desk. Hyosung hadn’t even noticed it until that moment. Had he meant to shoot her? Had he meant to shoot himself?

“Of course you were part of the plan,” Hyosung told him. The afternoon sun was streaming in through the windows, and the building was uncharacteristically quiet. It gave the entire scene a dreamlike quality. “We always needed you. But I never thought I would come to… depend on you… quite the way I have.”

Songchul lifted his gaze from the gun and stared at her. Everything hinged on how she played this next part.

“I should have killed you last night,” she said. “That was your part of the plan, in the end. For you to disappear and maybe leave behind a cash sum to help us pay for fuel.”

“But you didn’t,” Songchul said. “You killed Gan Junho.”

“And his bodyguard, Curls,” Hyosung added. “But… I couldn’t kill you. I could never kill you.” Her voice was low and throaty. She inclined her head to him, ever so slightly. “Please give me the gun.”

He pushed it across the desk, handle toward her, and nodded jerkily. “There are three things I can’t refuse,” he said.

“Money, whisky, and a good-looking woman,” Hyosung finished, and Songchul nodded bleakly. “You know, I wasn’t supposed to feel for you the way I do.” She could feel her heartbeat tick in her throat, counting down the seconds until she walked out the door. “I could never have left you there.”

Songchul was watching her across the desk. His eyes were not nearly so dead anymore. Inside was the stirring of hope.

“Why did you come here, then?” he asked.

“To return the lighter, of course,” Hyosung said lightly. His signal to her of the night before, that had backfired on him so spectacularly.

“Was that all?” He was still watching her. Still uncertain whether he could trust her.

“And to tell you goodbye,” Hyosung said, her voice growing serious again. “They’ll be looking for me, you know. For us. It’s not safe for me here. From the police or the Gan family.”

“So you’re stealing away in the dead of night?”

“In the heat of the late afternoon,” she agreed, and it was like any one of a number of quips that had passed between them before. She could see Songchul’s jaw tighten as the familiarity of it tasted bitter in his mouth.

Even after being played, knocked over the head, and left in a mob bar about to be in a world of trouble, he was interested. He wanted so badly to believe her.

“I can send you some sort of signal,” she said. “To let you know how I’m doing. Another lighter, maybe, with coordinates carved into it. Secret messages in invisible ink.”

“A tattoo,” he said. That startled Hyosung. She hadn’t realized he had been so very close behind them.

“Or that,” she said. She twisted the ring on her left hand. She would have dozens now, with real stones as large as the ones on the fashion jewelry she had been wearing for months.

“So this is it then? Goodbye?”

“I think it’s easier that way, don’t you?” Hyosung asked. She stood up then, and Songchul came forward one more time, unable to resist.

“For what it’s worth,” Hyosung said, “we could never have done it without you.”

“I don’t believe that for a second,” he said.

“Are you going to turn us in?” she asked.

“Han Sunhwa is already a prime suspect. Soon they’ll have all your faces. The mob and the police both. I won’t have to do a damn thing.”

“I knew you wouldn’t,” Hyosung said. She smiled up at him for the last time. “Give me a goodbye kiss?”

She had kissed him hundreds of times over the past few weeks, passionate kisses to make him lose his mind and loosen his tongue, kisses to excite him with phantom diamonds and castles in the air. This one was different. He didn’t pull away from her one-armed embrace, but nor did he return it. Nor did he seem to notice that her left arm was busy doing something else entirely.

“I’ll never forget you,” she told him. “I’ll look you up.” And she would, just to make sure.

She showed herself out with her coat draped over her arm, already knowing there was no way she could lose from here. His death would be in the papers as soon as someone found the body. Money, whisky, and a good-looking woman could all be poison in their own ways.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was made possible by the amazing Yuletiders in chat and my team of handholders. I couldn't have done it without you all! Thanks so much.


End file.
